NOTES PROM A JOURNAL.
When we first came to this place, General Slocum received a
telegram from headquarters which said that if we needed any scouting or
important secret service done, we had better use a certain John Douglas, who
was very faithful and efficient. The General told me he wanted me to take
charge of everything in the scouting department, and that I had better see
Douglas as soon as possible. At this point, it is very necessary to depend on
scouts and citizens, as our force is very small and we are entirely without
cavalry, so I sent for Douglas and he came to see me the next morning.
I was very much struck by his appearance; he was the first
man who came up at all to my idea of what a scout should be like. He is a man
about fifty years old, I should think, medium size and a little bent over, but
with a very tough, hard looking frame; his striking features, though, are his
eyes; they are jet black and piercing in their expression, with a restless,
eager look, as if he was always expecting to see the rifle of an enemy sticking
out from behind a tree or bush; his eyebrows are also black, but his hair has
turned gray with age. His walk was very peculiar, and was exactly like that
described of Leather-stocking in the “Deerslayer,” a sort of gait which,
without seeming to be much exertion, was equal to what we call a dog trot. He
made me think of all the old backwoods heroes I had ever read of, from Daniel
Boone down.
I found that he had papers from Rosecrans, Burnside, Dupont
and several others, all testifying to his marked ability and energy, and his
entire knowledge of every part of Tennessee and northern Georgia, and Alabama.
I talked with him some time and found that he was very intelligent and well
informed.
A few days after my first interview with Douglas, I received
a telegram from Murfreesboro stating that they had certain information that a
band of six or eight hundred guerrillas were in the neighborhood of
McMinnville. I sent for Douglas and told him I wanted to know the truth of the
story. He didn't stay five minutes after I had told him the rumor; this was
about seven o'clock in the evening. The next afternoon, about three o'clock, he
made his appearance and said the story was true; since he left me, he had
ridden nearly seventy miles to within three or four miles of the guerrilla
camp. The next day we were told by some citizens that this cavalry was
supported by infantry, and that it was the advance of a portion of Bragg's
army. We didn't believe this at all; still I was anxious to find out just what
the force was. I sent Douglas out again, telling him to find out every
particular before he came back. He was gone two days, and on his return, he
said he had spent several hours inside the enemy's camp; his information proved
that we had nothing at all to fear from them except depredations. I asked him
how he got inside their lines; he said that the picket he passed was a very
green-looking countryman; that when he approached, he was ordered to halt; he
rode up to the picket and said he was a bearer of dispatches to the commanding
officer. “Who is the commanding officer?” said the sentinel. “That is nothing
to do with your instructions, and you will get into difficulty if you don't let
me pass.” The sentinel passed him, and he went inside and talked with the men
and officers and saw the commanders. There was nothing remarkable in this, but
a man discovered as a spy by these guerrillas would be hung or have his throat
cut five minutes after he was caught.
The pay Douglas gets as chief of scouts of this vicinity is
only three dollars per day, very small compensation for the risk. He has told
me a number of stories of the sufferings of East Tennesseeans; they are equal
to any of Brownlow's; he says there is no exaggeration in the latter's
statements.
He told me of one young lady who lived with her mother near
Knoxville, whose brothers and father were strong Unionists. They had hidden
away among the mountains. He described her as a very refined, well educated
young woman. One day, a party of guerrillas came to her house and took her and
her mother out in the woods and tied them to a tree; they then asked them to
tell where their men relations were hidden; they refused to tell them; these
brutes gave them each a terrible whipping, but they still refused to give them
any information. These chivalric gentlemen then put nooses round their necks,
untied them and threatened them with instant hanging if they didn't tell what
they required. The young girl told them they might be able to torture her more
than she could bear, but before she would say one word that would compromise
her father or brothers, she would bite off her tongue and spit it in their
rebel faces.
They raised them off the ground three times, nearly killing
them. Afterwards, this same girl became a spy for our cavalry and led them on
several successful expeditions. Douglas was on one of them, and said that
during a fight that occurred, she insisted on staying under the heaviest of the
fire. She used sometimes to go inside the rebel lines and act as nurse in one
of the rebel hospitals; after she had got all the information that she could,
she would return inside our lines and tell what she had found out.
Yesterday there was very near being a terrible accident on
the railroad, about fifty miles from here, in amongst the mountains. Some
infernal guerrillas put a species of torpedo underneath a rail, just before the
passenger train from Nashville was due. Fortunately a locomotive came along
just before it and set the machine off; the explosion was tremendous; the
engine and tender were blown to pieces; railroad ties and rails were blown as
high as the tops of trees; the engineer was thrown twenty or thirty feet and
severely injured. If it had not been for this locomotive, probably hundreds of
men would have been killed and wounded, as the cars go crowded with officers
and soldiers. The perpetrator of this outrage, of course, could not be
discovered, but a man living near by seemed to be implicated, and his house and
barn were burnt.
They are very summary in dealing with guerrillas in this
country when they catch them. There is one despatch from General Crook to
Rosecrans on record to this effect: that he (Crook) fell in with a party of
guerrillas, twenty in number; that in the fight, twelve of them were killed and
the rest were taken prisoners. He regrets to state that on the march to camp,
the eight were so unfortunate as to fall off a log and break their necks.
SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written
During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 152-6
